A hate crime frenzy
THERE’S said to have been a huge rise in hate crimes committed in Britain. I’m stunned by the way this nonfact is solemnly accepted. It’s like saying there was a rise in air crashes after planes were invented. Most of the “incidents” that are dutifully logged would in the past never have been brought to the police’s attention at all. Yet it’s presented as a crime wave.
The Law Commission is to review hate crimes with the intention of including crimes against the elderly. There is certainly something especially horrible and cowardly about a thug or fraudster targeting old people and it’s good if the sentence handed down can reflect society’s disgust.
But be careful what you wish for because the concept of hate crime is becoming ludicrously debased as Richard Cooke, chairman of the West Midlands Police Federation, wrote yesterday, saying: “I fear a dangerous precedent could be set where our scant resources are skewed further and further away from the genuine crisis in our public safety that is taking place.”
The first hate crime laws were passed in America and the 1968 Civil Rights Act made it illegal to hurt or threaten anyone because of their race, colour, religion or national origin. No decent person would argue with that.
But in Britain hate crime is now defined as “any criminal offence which is perceived by the victim or any other person to be motivated by hostility or prejudice towards someone based on a personal characteristic”.
So now it’s all about perceiving yourself as a victim. Feel affronted when someone wolf whistles at you? Nottinghamshire Police will obligingly record this as misogyny and therefore a hate crime. Amber Rudd, Vince Cable and Boris Johnson have all been subject to police investigations because of some pretty unremarkable things they wrote or said. A whole investigation with bells and whistles? Is this really a good use of resources? Predictably no charges were brought. Being mean to goths or punks could also soon be a hate crime. But Sid Vicious would have been gutted if nobody had hated him. Misandry (hating men) could soon be a crime. Personally I often hate men – so sue me. More seriously a trans activist recently invited members of a closed Facebook group to name and shame academics in a number of universities who had dared question the wisdom of the new pickyour-own gender law. One online post about a targeted female professor read: “File a hate crime report against her and then the chairman and vice-chair… Drag them over the f ****** coals.”
Which means a hate crime can simply mean not agreeing with someone else’s ideas.
The Met – which can no longer afford to investigate “low-level” crimes – has 900 specialist officers monitoring hate crime which in practice means scrolling through Twitter brawls.
What’s worse is that the “hate crime” tag is used as evidence that Britain is seething with loathing thus making for even more divisiveness than exists already.
So yes, by all means clobber those who target the old. And if they get a custodial sentence make sure they’re not let out after serving only half of it. But using “hate crime” as a catch-all offence for anyone with poor manners or different views… bad idea.